A Damned Iowa Greyhound: The Civil War Letters of William by Donald C. Elder III PDF

William Henry Harrison Clayton used to be one in every of approximately 75,000 infantrymen from Iowa to affix the Union ranks through the Civil warfare. owning a highschool schooling and more desirable penmanship, Clayton served as an organization clerk within the nineteenth Infantry, witnessing battles within the trans-Mississippi theater. His diary and his correspondence together with his relations in Van Buren County shape a special narrative of the daily soldier lifestyles in addition to an eyewitness account of serious battles and a prisoner-of-war camp. Clayton participated within the siege of Vicksburg and participated in operations opposed to cellular, yet his writings are certain for the descriptions he supplies of lesser-known yet pivotal battles of the Civil warfare within the West. scuffling with within the conflict of Prairie Grove, the nineteenth Infantry sustained the top casualties of any federal regiment at the eld. Clayton survived that conflict with merely minor accidents, yet he used to be later captured on the conflict of Stirling's Plantation and served a interval of ten months in captivity at Camp Ford, Texas. Clayton's writing finds the complex sympathies and prejudices frequent between Union infantrymen and civilians of that interval within the country's historical past. He observes with nice unhappiness the brutal results of struggle at the South, sympathizing with the plight of refugees and lamenting the destruction of estate. He excoriates draft evaders and Copperheads again domestic, conveying the intra-sectional acrimony wrought via civil battle. eventually, his racist perspectives towards blacks show a typical yet ironic perspective between Union infantrymen whose efforts helped bring about the abolition of slavery within the usa.

Within the Politics of religion through the Civil warfare, Timothy L. Wesley examines the engagement of either northern and southern preachers in politics throughout the American Civil battle, revealing an period of denominational, governmental, and public scrutiny of spiritual leaders. arguable ministers risked ostracism in the local people, censure from church leaders, and arrests by way of provost marshals or neighborhood police.

Spring, 1864 . . . the Civil War's maximum generals face one another within the box of conflict. Ulysses S. provide spurs his military of the Potomac around the Rapidan River as a part of a grand offensive plan designed to weigh down the Confederacy in one blow. anticipating supply and his Federals is the military of Northern Virginia below the command of Robert E.

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery within the overdue 19th century, each one confronted the query of what rights former slaves may declare. levels of Freedom compares and contrasts those societies within which slavery used to be destroyed via battle, and citizenship was once redefined via social and political upheaval.

By the point of the Civil warfare, the railroads had complex to permit the stream of huge numbers of troops although railways had no longer but matured right into a actually built-in transportation procedure. Gaps among strains, incompatible music gauges, and different vexing impediments remained in either the North and South.

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The regt. was formed in line & all ready to go, when the Col. stepped out and informed us that he could not go with us. 9 But yesterday evening after we had pitched our tents the colonel came into camp. 10 Our regiment was commanded by Major Kent11 during the march. The Lieut. 12 has not yet joined the regt. We started on the march Sept. 16th and marched about 8 miles, camped on the banks of the Little Piney. The next day started about 12 o'clock & marched 8 or 9 miles to Big Piney. Sept. 18 marched at 6 and got about 12 miles.

Abs. Nincehelser worked at the hospital being built at Springfield, but when we left he had to come along. The country between here and Springfield is about the same as it is from Rolla to Springfield. There is plenty of water. The last day we crossed a creek 7 times in coming 10 miles. The water was about half boot deep. The land in some places is tolerably productive. It is very rocky, in some places nothing but rock. We had the first frost the morning we left Springfield, Oct. 11. It was a heavy one.

In Iowa, for example, the federal government mandated a total of 21,140 enlistments; the state actually enrolled 24,438 three-year volunteers in 1862. One such individual who answered the call in the summer of 1862 was twenty-two-year-old William Henry Harrison Clayton. He had been born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1840 and was named after the person who would win the presidential election later that year. His family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, when he was two years old. d. Courtesy of the Lincoln Memorial Shrine Collection.